


Not quite

by quenive



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Davesprite Has A Cloaca, Doomed Timeline, M/M, Masturbation, but kinda stretches it out to the point of irrelevance, hal is a pair of shades and most likely gets off to his own rambling, hal tries to theorize shit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-05
Updated: 2016-10-05
Packaged: 2018-08-19 19:08:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8221724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quenive/pseuds/quenive
Summary: "Dog food lid is 'dildo of god' backwards."
 It takes him a while to reply. You're wondering what the fuck is he doing in there since you know damn well it'd take him less than a second to check. In that time you yawn again, and your eyes open to some fresh text on screen.
TT: Well you aren't *wrong*.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Mertrash](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mertrash/gifts).



Clawed hands clutched the bottle of apple juice clumsily. The nails made little clicking noises against the glass, scraped the cap when attempting to unscrew it from the bottleneck. You curled your finger around the cap as much as it could could go in a brave attempt at getting the thing to fucking open. It was no rocket science. Just a fucking bottle of AJ. You twist, but your finger just slips against it.

TT: You might think that you almost got it, and that may be true to an extent.  
TT: But looking at it from an outside perspective, you're doing a pretty shitty job, bro.  
TT: The probability of you opening the bottle like that is strikingly iffy.  
TT: Do you want my exact statistics, Dave?

You twitch your upper lip up in an obvious scoff at the red text. Wasn't in the mood for his shit at the moment, this was serious fucking business. Surprisingly, you don't twitch at the fact that you just got referred to as "Dave". You're used to it in this case, and wouldn't really want to get called anything else by him. Maybe "sir" in the long run, but you ain't pushing it any time soon. 

With the help of your "index finger" claw you tap the cap and bite your lip. All the new and ingenious ways of opening the bottle with your handy dandy bird hands got washed down the stream of stupidity when you leaned the cap onto what would be the thenar space if you still had human hands. Given the fact that you currently possess crow-like fingers, there is no webbing between where the "thumb" and "index" would be. But you still press the two digits together with the cap in between and twist. The ribbed texture of the cap presses into your skin. It would be mildly irritating if you didn't get the pressure to loosen. A look of delight plastered itself on your orange-tinted face when the cap got unscrewed. Suck it, bitches, you still got everything you had before. And more, so much more. 

"Lay them on me. I'm feeling pretty fucking confident." You reply, then it's bottoms up when you tilt the bottle down to get a good swig. Felt glorious, the feeling of triumph mashed together with the artificial apple taste. Why is that a thing? Like when you buy fucking dish soap it says "real apple extract" or some shit, but then you get artificial crap in the bull you drink. It's right there, written in a tiny fucking print to hide from your deluded eyes. If processed enough, could dish soap actually be healthier than the juices we drink? Avoid certain chemicals by consuming a large amount of others. You ponder and question this beyond comprehension when you can't sleep, which is always. You don't sleep. Sleep is irrelevant to you. 

TT: As always, you fail to find yourself inhabiting a space in the majority.  
TT: The odds were against you, with as much as 82.44% being in favor of your downfall.  
TT: Rounding it up with my figurative lasso, we can put it in an 80:20 ratio.  
TT: Doing so sets it into basic bitch category.  
TT: But it also sets off a bizarre paradox, so the bitch isn't really that basic in our case.

After that, he stops talking. You know the fucker's just waiting for you to ask, so you figure you'd indulge him. Capping the bottle up gently, you set it on the table where you sprawled your sprite tail. It curled a bit on the tip. Even if it technically wasn't you putting your feet up, it would still be considered rude by anyone in your vicinity. Other than the pointed shades on your face, you're alone in the room. So you lean back and adjust the eyewear on your face so it isn't as awry.

"Alright, I'll bite. What's the paradoxical not-so-basic bitch category?" You cross your arms over your chest. The bush of feathers around your neck puffs up into your chin when you sink into the sofa. 

TT: Standing alone, the basic bitch is something you would call the 80/20 rule.  
TT: I, as an intellectual, refer to it as the Pareto principle.   
TT: When 20% of the causes are the main suspects for 80% of the over-all results.  
TT: Imagine an apple farm. 80% of the apples being the fruits of only 20% of the trees.  
TT: The definition is seemingly unfitting to your situation, but hear me out right now.  
TT: I notice you tend to function better when the odds are piled up to deceased Skaia against you.  
TT: You're more likely to succeed if there's an 80% chance of fail than if there was an identical chance of win. The 20% in the latter tends to be your own little mortician. It's heavy, but the funeral analogy is spot on.  
TT: There are four twenties in the eighties fail. Instead of blazing it, we'll analyze it. Or maybe the latter while indulging in the former.  
TT: We'll call it blazalyze as a witty & totally unironic portmanteau.   
TT: Each twenty will be the foundation for your eventual victory, it making your success rate rise up a staggering 80%.  
TT: That's where the paradox sits in like an old lady's crusty adhesive ass to her hate-friend's prized seat cushion.  
TT: The win-eighty is derived from the loss-twenty, which is derived from the loss-eighty.  
TT: You being an orange sheep, and being illogical as all hell, are instantly sentenced to loss then.  
TT: But being sentenced to loss sentences you to inevitable victory.  
TT: "Inevitable", but the process continues. It goes on and on and on.  
TT: It makes my non-organic senses tingle. Like trying to divide by zero.   
TT: What a rush.

"Jesus." You whisper out and blink a few times. Your eyes hurt a bit from all the red text they were just subjected to. For some reason, you feel a "relatable" vibe in your head. Who could even relate to you now, though? "Don't overheat, dude. You're on my face, I don't want my sinuses blowing up or whatever just because you got a weird techno-boner."

TT: My techno-dick is flaccid, I don't know what you're talking about.  
TT: And as far as I know, your sinuses will be fine.

"Says you." Puffing out, you refer to the latter statement. Come to think of it, the shades are in fact a little hotter than they were a few minutes ago. 

TT: Says me, who has unlimited access to all the information internet provides, which is admittedly limited.

"Web and internet aren't the same thing, though." You say absently, for no apparent reason what so ever, just before you yawn. A little taken back by it, you blink a few more times to get a grip on yourself. That's shitty, you don't sleep. Maybe it was the dude's monologue. 

TT: I know, I have access to both.

"What about my spritey senses? It isn't internet, but I know some shit you'd never be able to find there no matter how deep you look." This time you stretch. Arms, wings, and tail all unfolding at once. Wings spreading under your back, your feathers catch onto the fabric of the sofa thus making you cringe a bit, but it's bearable. 

TT: Like what?

You fold everything back to its original place. Wings neatly settled behind your back, tail having a small curl again, arms over your chest. 

"Confidential." 

TT: Bullshit.

"Legitness. There's crap I just can't hand out like cheap cigars. Spread out my shitty trench coat and offer valuable information to wandering pedestrians? No dice, brother, my name's on some invisible sprite confidentiality paperwork which I don't recall signing for the life of me." Your arms are long unfolded and making gestures as you speak, but your chin is still resting on a feathery bush. It's oddly comfortable, but you probably look silly as shit. 

TT: There has to be something not bound by SBURB laws that you're not sharing with us here.  
TT: By jove, Dave. Spit it out.

You bite your lip, nibble on it with blunt teeth as you think. The confidential shit wasn't just an empty statement. Even if you wanted to you couldn't say anything about the game, relevant or otherwise, unless permitted by some unknown & unsigned law. You can't see it, can't physically nor mentally grasp the way it's holding you in place, but it's there. 

Finally you sigh and flop your arms down by your sides. 

"Dog food lid is 'dildo of god' backwards." 

It takes him a while to reply. You're wondering what the fuck is he doing in there since you know damn well it'd take him less than a second to check. In that time you yawn again, and your eyes open to some fresh text on screen. 

TT: Well you aren't *wrong*.

You grin. 

"Am I ever?" 

TT: Do I have to map out the statistics again?  
TT: It wouldn't be too much of an issue, Dave.  
TT: In fact, I'd be happy to bring pointless trivia into our conversation once fucking more.

Oh man, he legit gets so into it. It's cute in a way, but it's also really weird how he seems to get some sort of ironically erotic kick out of that crap. You decide to casually let it slip to please your curiosity, but you still carefully shake your head a no. 

"Not necessary. Unless you actually get off to that shit like you implied, then be my guest." 

Somehow, you can almost picture his eyebrow raising up at your suggestive statement. He doesn't even have a face, but you somehow get the feeling that he's arching it up as soon as the sudden silence commenced. By a fraction, you notice that the shades got warmer, and you snort. "You faking a blush there, buddy?" 

TT: Baka.

"Oh my god no, shut the fuck up. Not in this house." Now you're fully smiling, nearly grinning. Yeah, your lips do part just enough for your teeth to see the light of day. 

TT: The content I share with you has its pros and cons.  
TT: If we were to focus on the pros, we'd see that they'd outnumber the flaws by a long mile.  
TT: I'll push everything to the side, though, because only you are relevant now.

Now it's you who's raising a brow. You know he sees it, but you still allow yourself to do so. 

"Me?" You inquire, curiosity distinguishable in your tone. 

TT: I have yet to talk to anyone who "gets" me the way you do.  
TT: We are akin to each other. Birds of a runty feather.  
TT: Can't blame a guy for getting a stiffy while presenting you with valuable information, even if you fail to comprehend some of it.   
TT: Underlining "some", because in truth, you really fucking get me bro.  
TT: The notion alone is shamefully masturbatory.

That's something new. You always liked Hal. Doomed timeline or not, there's some good in every bad. But you never got a confession like this before. Dude's basically saying that you allowing him to theorize gives him something like a boner. Can't get realer than that. Despite him lacking a dick (which is basically key in the word "boner"), something really did shuffle inside of you. Unnoticed by Hal, you gulp, Adam's apple bobbing a bit as you do. 

"Huh. I never looked at it that way before." You shrug as if it was nothing, but in reality it's the thing you really wanted to hear. You are not the least bit disappointed, and could never really be when you're talking with this "person" in particular. "It kind of goes both ways, I guess? I mean we kinda do share the same fucking dynamic in a way. And dynamic is fucking key, bro. Can't do shit without it. If it flunks, everything goes to crap faster than you can say 'well fucking shit that sure was as bland as my aunt Helen's casserole'. You feel me?" 

He does not, in fact, admit to feeling you. Hal goes into a pause again, and you go back to gnawing at your lip. When the skin finally breaks, your tongue flicks out to lap up some sickeningly yellow drops of blood. The taste is similar to what your own blood tasted like when you were fully human, but now it has a weird mixture of human, crow, and something you really can't decipher. Probably because you're not quite sure what crow blood tasted like in the first place, and probably because the game added something unfamiliar with the whole sprite prototyping thing. His silence does trouble you just a bit, though. And you sit there licking your blood, pondering what could be going on in the pair of shades sitting on your face. 

And when he finally talks, you can't really say you're surprised by the nature of the question. 

TT: Are you familiar with the term "ship of Theseus"?

You shrug again, as if he can see you doing so. After that stupid move you decide on speaking out your answer like a sensible human be- 

Like a sensible person? 

"If familiar means 'heard about it but didn't bother to look into it' then that sums it up." 

TT: I see.

Pause. Once again, you catch yourself wondering what exactly is he thinking. He's obviously able to process everything at an alarming speed, so replying right away really shouldn't be a huge issue for the guy. But alright, you suppose you'll give him a break and all. You're giving each other attention, might as well train some of your patience during his precisely calculated (most likely) pauses. 

You glance down your body. From the fluff around your neck, to the crumpled up shirt you're wearing because a dude just felt like it. It kinda absorbed your spritey essence and became orangey as well, making the record symbol look oddly unappealing. There's a slit at your crotch, just where your legs would separate if you still had them. Although invisible to the untrained eye, literally unspottable if you aren't searching for it, you always make a face when you direct your attention to it. Like a cringe, but not quite. Perhaps a sort of shame or regret, but there's nothing you can do about it now. 

TT: In ancient Greece, there was this king dude named Theseus. He did some important shit, I guess, mostly related to naval battles and things like founding a whole fucking city.

You read through his text when he finally said it, and your tail curls upwards. You intertwine the fingers of both of your hands over your belly, looking over the surface of the tough looking skin. Your eyes trace it from your long, sharp nails, fingers, wrist, up your arm, where the crow skin mixes up with your orange-tinted human skin. It all ends with a small amount of feathers on both of your elbows, then it's all smooth sailing from up there. 

TT: His ship was preserved as a memorial to him, in his honor, a medal for doing an excellent fucking job. The thing with wooden ships, however, is that they'll eventually rot. To keep it from decaying, people started replacing various parts. A simple question remained, though.  
TT: When does the ship of Theseus stop being the ship of Theseus, and when does it start being a whole new vessel?

Your hands are too... bird, to do anything of this sort. Even if you have taken the liberty to hone your skills with using them, you'd do more damage than anything if you were to use your claws for such a thing. So you put them away, and by putting them away you mean keeping them exactly where they are. Away from your birdy parts, far a-fucking-way. You let out a shaky breath and let the tip of your tail inch up more. It's pretty long, any you can change length at will. So by all means, you're a walking hentai phenomenon. 

TT: The mythical ship served as an affiche infant for a lot of questions in the future, the foundation for many theories and observations.  
TT: Mainly, it brought up the problem of identity. How much modification does it take for a thing to lose its original value, to inch away from its original structure. And with that, how much does it take for it to remain the same?  
TT: If we remove one of the planks, does it still remain the same ship. Two? Three?

The tip of your tail hesitantly rubs over your slit, and the grip you had on yourself tightens. Your hands are basically crushing one another, so you obviously blame nervousness as the number one culprit here. That aside, you're horny as shit right about now. It hit you like a fucking bucket out of nowhere, and it's still there while you're reading through Hal's text. It'd be a lie if you said you didn't shudder when you felt your sprite tail's smooth touch on the bizarre part you never thought you'd have, so you kept quiet when it came to coherent sentences. When it slid all the way over it, there was a familiar warmth in the pit of your gut. You didn't do this in such a long time. 

TT: What if we replaced the whole god damn dock with another dock.  
TT: Or better yet, what if we replaced all the parts gradually, one by one, and then used them to build another ship in the end? Which ship would be considered the original structure?

You slowly separate your hands, willing yourself to loosen the deathgrip they had on one another. When you inch them down to spread yourself with the tips of your "thumbs", your claws graze the sensitive skin around the area. If you pressed further, it'd probably break the first layer of skin. But you don't care at the moment, so you go ahead and press to get a good "grip", and then spread as much as it could go. 

TT: Both?

Needless to say, it wasn't anything you're really used to before. You feel your face heating up, most likely stained a deeper hue of yellow/orange, or whatever the fuck color that intensifies when you blush. Then your tail rubs over the inside, gently ghosting over it with the blunt base just below the tip. 

TT: Neither?

You're having a hard time distinguishing sickness from lust, since both are equally present right about now. But somehow, the lust starts to overpower the disgust and you're soon to be sliding the tail up and down, pressing lightly. Not enough to penetrate, but enough to make your heartbeat speed up and your breathing to gain in intensity. 

TT: There is no correct answer to this question. The one who we stripped of its original content still maintains in nostalgic value, while as the other one has all of the characteristics of the original, but not quite.  
TT: Let's look at the original-original, but from a different perspective.  
TT: What if we change the planks of that ship, but to a different material?   
TT: Like plastic, or metal.

Oh god, what is he even saying? You get it superficially, it's right above your head and at the tip of your tongue. You're well aware that his thing has a subtext to it, but you restrain from mentioning it. You'll read over it again in a less crucial time, when you're not about to- 

And you just did. You push the tip in. Out of nervousness, you press your thumbs harder into your skin, and flinch them away when it starts to hurt. You settle on jabbing them into the couch cushion instead. As you inch in further, your vocal chords do their thing and soon enough you're whimpering out some incoherent bullshit. You know he hears it, but you're also aware that he won't really react. Maybe in the future, eventually. Now he's too caught up in the point he's trying to make, too deep in his monologue to comment on you getting off to him being aware of you doing so. It feels so good, so your tail curls out of impulse. Then it feels better, and you're moaning out a throat-shredding whine. 

TT: Or orange feathers.

God damn it. God fucking damn. You're leaking. Gross, yellow material going down your tail and dripping onto the side, on the sofa cushion. You want to look away, but you don't. Surprised by the amount but oddly compliant, your fairly lubricated tail moves in and out at a more frantic speed. It's going like it's motorized, like the only reason you have a tail is exactly this, and not anything else. 

TT: While different in physical content, what if they're identical to the invisible context that lies beneath the surface?

"Fuck." Soon you're vocalizing your thoughts, diving in deep in that sea of sin. You can't breathe, but you're also not drowning. It's warm and comfortable, like your body being wrapped around in a heated hug. 

TT: But still, not quite.

Your wings spread out, and you feel a few feathers getting plucked from your skin while they disconnect from being rubbed against the couch material. You completely fail to mind that as you tilt your head up, close your eyes, and finish with a sharp intake of breath. A few smaller but more frantic ones following soon after the starting one as you ride out your orgasm for as long as your body lets you. A larger stream of yellow follows the one that already stained the couch. Feeling it flow down your skin and into the felt, you open your eyes and look down at it. Your upper lips curl upwards in disgust. 

TT: All of what I just said is absurdly stretched, and thin in general value.  
TT: Irrelevant, not to be looked back on.  
TT: How was it?

You pull your tail out and hiss, but you keep it on your "crotch" area because you really don't want it to stain the table. There's enough magic sprite goo to clean up as it is, you don't want your work to be even worse than it already is. Acknowledging his question, you try to catch your breath and speak properly. 

"Great." Horrible, but great. "I guess all I needed was a push." The gears turn a bit in your head, and the hamster inside of your head does a comical double-take when it realizes his truest intentions. Son of a bitch. "How'd you know?" 

TT: I didn't.

"Oh." You bite your lip, the hamster continues. Yeah, he couldn't have known that him talking about seemingly pointless bullshit would get you off. Who does that, anyways? And it wasn't that directly, it was your own inability to calm your shit and remain patient. You feel ashamed, but not because you did it basically in front of him. Staying quiet for a moment too long, you reach to the table to get the bottle of AJ in your grip again. It's easier to open this time, and you remain 'humble' with the amount you down in one fucking go. When done, you put it back. A content sigh escapes your lips, but there's still a hint of something unspoken of in it. You lean back into the couch. "Thanks anyways." 

TT: You're welcome.   
TT: I wouldn't mind repeating it soon. You're a good listener, Dave.

"Yeah. I guess I am." Now you kind of get what he's saying, as you lie there next to a pool of your own sludge. Dave. 

You're actually sleepy now, and you're well aware that no one's going to come in and see you like this. Is it possible, that you're sleepy? Sprites don't really.. Davesprite- 

You sigh and close your eyes. The heat of the shades is comforting, soothing even if he isn't saying anything. Feels alright. Dave. 

You're Dave. 

Dave, but not quite.

**Author's Note:**

> Someone really likes Davesprite.


End file.
